Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Review of "The Boys Who Woke Up Early" by A.D. Hopkins - A Brilliant First Novel


In creating his intriguing first novel "The Boys Who Woke Up Early,"A.D. Hopkins has drawn from the deep well of his memories of growing up in Appalachia at the end of the Eisenhower era.  The title has a wonderful double meaning. Stony and Jack were two friends living in the southwest Virginia town of Early. While still in high school, they teamed up to form a private detective practice. I think of this work as The Hardy Boys meet "To Kill A Mockingbird," with a dash of "Tom Sawyer." The boys volunteered to help at the short-staffed sheriffs office. Through that lens, they saw the underbelly of the Jim Crow South, and eventually played a role in changing the nature of racial tensions and race relations in their corner of the world. So, in that sense, they helped to wake up the town of Early. And in another sense, they became "woke" to the realities of discrimination and prejudice at an early age.

As told through a series of adventures and misadventures, we see Stony and Jack learning to find their place in a backwoods world that was mired in old ways of thinking while the world around them was changing. This is a coming of age story - both for these two young men and for the town that they called home.

The narrative is full of tales of comradeship, moonshine, hunting, bullying, Klan rallies, domestic violence, political corruption, puppy love, and a feud that rivals that of the Hatfields and McCoys. The author has created characters that are both believable and relatable. I came to care about each of them.

This is a book worth reading. I look forward to the author's next offerings.

Enjoy!

Al

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